Foreign investment in Ukraine

At present, Eastern Europe countries are one of the most attractive direct and portfolio investment destinations with exciting opportunities for business development and expansion. Among these countries Ukraine for sure is one of the leaders due to a number of reasons:

- Ukrainian soil is the richest in the world (great opportunities for agricultural business); - Ukraine has very tender and agro-friendly climate (no tornado, tsunami, deserts, dangerous insects, natural disasters);

- Ukrainian workers are skilled and lower-paid comparing to highly developed countries; - Ukrainian market is huge – around 50 million consumers;

- Ukraine has extensive well-developed infrastructure (transportation, communication, hotels, etc);

- Ukraine is a net exporter of electricity (entrepreneur may save a lot on electricity though); - Ukraine enjoys great discount on gas from Russia (gas price in Ukraine is much lower than in the EU);

- Ukraine enjoys very favourable location (between Europe and Asia, North and South Europe) and geographical proximity to the EU market;

- Ukrainian income and corporate taxes are the lowest in Europe (you can also switch to flat tax);

- Ukrainian environmental protection laws are very liberal comparing to highly developed countries;

- Ukrainian economy is steadily growing up to 6% from year-to-year; Ukraine joined the WTO at the beginning of 2008. When President Yushchenko took office in January 2005, he made improving the investment climate one of his top economic policy goals. This led to a number of new government initiatives, such as creation a State agency for investment and innovation and a number of investor councils chaired by the President. Over the past few years, Ukraine has liberalized its markets, reduced regulation, eliminated most licensing requirements, eliminated most restrictions on foreign exchange and begun the transformation of the agricultural sector from state-run farms to private agriculture. After years of hyperinflation and plummeting currency values, the national currency, the hryvnia, has been stable against the U.S. dollar for over four years.

Licensing Principles

The worldwide marketplace for all types of electronic information resources is rapidly being developed as publishers and vendors who create electronic information seek to attract libraries of all types (public, academic, special, national) as their customers. Today, libraries around the world continue in their role as mediators between citizens, including those affiliated with specific institutions, and information and cultural expression roles that persist even more – energetically, it appears, for electronic information than for print. And, just as libraries advance the archiving and preservation of traditional media, so they are seeking ways to ensure that electronic resources will be archived and preserved to be accessible over a long period of time. Pricing also remains an issue: libraries continue to express concerns about the fact that a number of electronic resources appear to be priced higher than were their print counterparts.

While the library community strongly supports the continuation into the digital environment of exceptions that have been granted under copyright law, there are some areas where different procedures and policies need to be developed to handle electronic publications. Of particular interest to IFLA in the development of licenses is the following:

Use of electronic information everywhere in the world is, at this time, usually defined and described by contractual agreements, otherwise known as licenses. These licenses describe comprehensively the terms of the provider/library relationship. Contracting is a comparatively new (1990s) way of doing business for most parties in the information chain.

Licenses are pure marketplace arrangements in which a willing information provider and a willing purchaser of information access come together to make arrangements, deal by deal, resource by resource.

User rights are defined within the terms and conditions of the licenses. They are not governed by (comparatively well understood) copyright legislation to the same extent as is the use of "fixed" or traditional information formats.

Libraries generally provide patron access to such information via access to remote publisher or vendor sites, rather than library-controlled sites. Yet, the tasks and costs of libraries and information providers with regard to long-term archiving and preservation of electronic resources are disturbingly unclear. While a license cannot resolve this complicated set of electronic archiving issues, it will, generally, recognize them and express a set of commitments or expectations on the part of the contracting parties.

IFLA views the licensing arena positively, although key issues remain to be resolved. In particular, licensing is showing itself responsive to the complex business arrangements being entered into between information providers and library consortia of different types and sizes. IFLA encourages and supports the evolution of all types of libraries negotiating as consortia. Nonetheless, even with the current move to licensing as a complementary means of regulating the use of electronic information, libraries and their users need effective, well-balanced national copyright laws that recognize not only the copyright owners' need for remuneration and recognition, but also the critical purposes of public information, education and research. This balance, struck in carefully crafted copyright legislation, must find expression in all information resource licenses.